We’re pretty excited to mix up the format a little, with some time to jump into some new areas we haven’t typically talked about in our previous shows:

1. The Azure Platform – An Overview (60 minutes)Let’s start off the day with a dive into Windows Azure. We’ll talk about what Windows Azure offers, from hosting applications to durable storage. We’ll look at Windows Azure roles types, hosting web applications and worker processes. We’ll also cover durable storage options, both traditional relational database that is offered as SQL Azure, or more cloud-centric offerings in Windows Azure Storage for files, semi-structured data, and queues.

2. Hands on @home with Azure (120 minutes)For this hands-on portion of the day, we’ll work on the @home with Windows Azure project. The @home project will give you a solid understanding of using Windows Azure in a project that contributes back to Stanford’s Folding@home distributed computing project. We’ll walk through the code, provisioning an account, and getting the application deployed and running.

3. Caching – A Scalable Middle Tier (45 minutes)Creating a stateless application is a difficult but fundamental aspect of building a scalable application in the cloud. In this session, we’ll talk about the Windows Azure Cache service and using it as a middle tier to maintain state and cache objects that can be shared by multiple instances.

4. SQL Azure, Data Sync, and Reporting (45 minutes)SQL Azure offers a scalable database as a service without having to configure and maintain hardware. We’ll look at the subtle differences between on premises SQL Server databases and SQL Azure, and how Data Sync can be used to synchronize data between multiple databases both in the cloud and on premises. We’ll also look at SQL Azure Reporting.

5. Windows 8 and Azure – Better Together (60 minutes)The consumer preview of Windows 8 is out, and it’s the perfect time to ramp up on developing native Metro-style applications. In this session, we’ll give an overview of Windows 8, and delivering a richer user experience by leveraging a cloud backend.